With the release of Zend Framework 3, it's time to halt development on Zend Framework 1. As such, we hereby announce that Zend Framework 1 reaches its End of Life (EOL) three months from today, on 28 September 2016.

Between now and then, we will only provide security fixes, if any security reports are made in that time frame. Past that point, we will offer custom bug and security fixes for Zend Framework 1 on-demand only to Enterprise users of Zend Server. [...] Additionally, as of today, access to our legacy subversion server is disabled.

Everyone who regularly visits my blog knows that I'm a complete fan of the ZendServiceManager component. It is always my choice to deal with dependency injection in any kind of project, more now that v3 has been released, which is faster and has a better public API.

The workflow while working with the ServiceManager is usually the same. You create a factory or abstract factory that creates a service and then you register that service into the ServiceManager itself. Of course you have to optimize your code, and you should try to reuse the same factories whenever possible, and try not to abuse of abstract factories and initializers.

He points out the main problem with using services like this in a larger application, namely that you can end up with a large amount of them, making them difficult to manage (and find problems with). He proposed solution uses this library to minimize the amount of code needed buy injecting dependencies into the service based on "inject" annotations. He includes an example of this functionality in action and includes a few things to keep in mind using the package (like the slower parsing of the annotations some limitations it currently has).

The Cloudways blog has posted an interview they've done with Adam Culp a senior consultant with Zend and organizer of both the Sunshine PHP conference and ZendCon.

Adam Culp is a very experienced PHP developer currently associated with Zend Technologies. He has been a trainer and speaker at various PHP events. He was the organizer of SunshinePHP 2016. He is also the member of Zend Certification advisory board and contributor to Zend framework. He is an expert developer of LAMP, Windows, IIS, MYSQL, CSS, AJAX, Javascript, and HTML. Without waiting anymore, let’s explore his life experiences and ideas.

In the interview Adam answers questions about:

His past and how he got in to software development

How he feels being a part of the Zend certification advisory board

Questions about the Sunshine PHP Conference and SoFloPHP user group

Why he prefers open source software

What trends he sees coming and where he sees current software standing in the big picture

zend-expressive does not come out of the box with a console for handling cli commands. However it's easy to add this and make full use of the container and its dependencies.

He uses the Symfony console component to handle most of the "heavy lifting" with the command line interaction, pulled in via Composer. He shows the process for getting the component installed and how to create the "bootstrap" file needed to build an instance of the Application class. He follows this with a simple "greeting" command including the configuration to add a few arguments and output the simple "Hello" message. He then creates the functionality to wire it in to the Zend Expressive application and gives an example of it in use.

In a new post to his site Matthew Weier O'Phinney has announced the release of Expressive v1.0 from Zend. The Expressive framework is PSR-7 based with a heavy emphasis on middleware and the reuse of other components to make a basic framework structure.

This is a huge milestone for the ZF3 initiative; I've even called it the cornerstone. It signals a huge shift in direction for the project, returning to its roots as a component library. Expressive itself, however, also signals the future of PHP applications we envision: composed of layered, single-purpose PSR-7 middleware.

He also links to this post on the Zend Framework blog with more information about the release including what's new in 1.0.0 (hint: not much) and what you can look forward to in the future from the framework. He mentions some of the other PSR-7 frameworks out in the PHP ecosystem right now and some of the reasoning behind the project being created in the first place. He also talks some about how it was started and some of the feedback/contributions they've received since then.

In this post to his siteAbdul Malik Ikhsan shows you how to use a middleware class that does some extra routing as a "controller" in your Zend Expressive application.

If you are familiar with frameworks with provide controller with multi actions functionality, like in Zend Framework 1 and 2, you may want to apply it when you use ZendExpressive microframework as well. Usually, we need to define 1 routed middleware, 1 __invoke() with 3 parameters ( request, response, next ). [...] What if we want to use only one middleware class which facilitate [multiple] pages?

He shows how to take a sample route configuration for an "album" endpoint and handle it via an AbstractPage class that performs a bit of reflection on the request to route things the right way. Then the "controller" is created by extending this abstract class and functions are defined for each action, complete with access to the request, response and next middleware objects.

On the Zend Blog they've posted a new guide showing you how to create a PHP cluster in AWS using the Zend Server software to help make things easier.

Running a cluster of PHP servers on AWS can be a complex task to say the least, and in this article we will look into the various tasks involved in managing a PHP clustered environment. We will look into why it can be a complex and tricky task and how Zend Server help alleviate the pain involved.

They start by introducing the guidelines of the challenge, easily creating the set of PHP nodes with simpler maintenance abilities, monitoring and session sharing included. While this isn't a step-by-step guide per-se, it does give you a good idea of some of the technology needs around clustering PHP instances (and how Zend Server (Cluster) helps solve some common issues). This includes screenshots of the interfaces used for these common tasks like:

Zeev Suraski needs no introduction. He is the Co-founder of Zend Technologies and is credited for some exceptional work around development during his career. In 1997, he created PHP 3 with his friend, Andi Gutmans. The name Zend is basically derived from Zeev and Andi.

Zeev’s contribution to PHP can never be ignored because it was his efforts from his early days that actually resulted in more than 20 million PHP based websites. He made significant contributions in writing the Zend engine and is also a member of Apache Software Foundation. I had the honor of interviewing Zeev, where he shared his experiences and thoughts.

In the interview Zeev answers questions about:

how he got started with PHP and why he became "a PHP guy"

his story about how he got into programming in general

the work he and Andi did for PHP 3

his opinion on PHP frameworks

his view of PHP moving forward including PHP 7

There's plenty more great content here so if you've ever wondered some about the history of the language and where Zeev fits in it all I'd suggest giving it a read.

Rogue Wave Software announced today that it has acquired Zend Technologies, the leader in end-to-end PHP web and mobile application development and deployment solutions. With 50 percent of the web workload running on PHP, including Magento, Drupal, and WordPress, Zend products drive PHP in the enterprise, from code creation through production deployment.

It's something that's definitely taken the PHP community by surprise and left many wondering what the future of the language my hold with Zend having been such a critical part of the engine that parses and executes the PHP code we write every day. Chris Tankersly has already shared some of his thoughts on the matter and why, as he puts it, this "doesn't matter" to PHP and it's community as much as some are thinking.

Matthew Weier O'Phinney has spent the last ten years of his career working for Zend as a part of their Zend Framework team. In this post to his site he looks back over the years, how it all started and where he is today.

10 years ago, as I write this, I was on a plane from Burlington, VT, to San Jose, CA, where I'd be starting work at Zend Technologies the next day as a PHP Developer.

He talks about where he started out at Zend (the eBiz team) and the kind of work he was given. It was early on that he started working with an internal, new project at the time: Zend Framework. He looks at some of his early contributions to the project and his "trial by fire" when he was asked to help give a tutorial about it at that year's ZendCon. He also mentions some of the people he's worked with along the way and gives thanks to the founding Zend team. Zend Framework was one of the first major frameworks out there and paved the way for the framework-driven environment we find ourselves in now. With Zend Framework v2 it encouraged a component-based system that spread quickly across the entire PHP community. Thank you Matthew for all of your hard work over the years, not just in the Zend Framework ecosystem but in the PHP community as a whole.